Happy Holidays!

Hope everyone had a safe and festive Turkey Day, even if your turkey was tofu (I have several friends who don’t eat meat and I respect that). What I respect even more are those who are out today hunting bargains. I worked retail for enough years that there aren’t enough sedatives in the world to have me going near any kind of shopping establishment between now and February :) Peace to you all, but my list is D-O-N-E! I make it my New Year’s Resolution to have all holiday shopping done by Thanksgiving so I shop the rest of the year and stash my presents–which means my seasonal challenge is to try and remember where I put everything from the rest of the year (I usually end up finding a few things from the year or two before that got misplaced, too).

But the one thing I do try and do every year is donate time and items for local charities, because I remember what it was like as a kid to not have presents under the tree. To be that kid who went back to school and while everyone else was so excited and chattering on about what they got, had to dread answering that I didn’t get anything or that I only got a book if I was really lucky. It wasn’t fun. However, you do learn to be creative. And one of the things we used to do is refurbish/repurpose items. So in the fun tradition of my childhood, I found this online which was one of my favorite pastimes— making dollhouses from suitcases (I mostly used old plastic lunchboxes because they were easier to cut through). Still, you get the idea. You can glue ribbon around the holes to finish them off and keep them safer for little hands– big ones, too.

Hope you enjoy! Most of all, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season!